Tag: HUD Secretary Ben Carson

“We are surrounded by Black cops,” said Leroy Moore, with POOR Magazine and Krip Hop Nation, about the 15 Black cops who surrounded us houseless and formerly houseless mamas, uncles, children and elders from the Poor People’s March when we walked humbly into the Washington, D.C., office of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to demand our housing back. “We are here to meet with Ben Carson,” we all said.

There we were – the unhoused, the evicted, the displaced, the disabled, Black, Brown, Indigenous, poor white, youth and elders on one accord, all colors, all nations, all cultures, all ages, all abilities. The 2018 Poor Peoples March on Washington was originally launched by impacted poor, houseless and formerly unhoused people from the Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign 15 years ago. Poor folks walked in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor Peoples March on Washington in 1968.

With the Trump regime pushing for a massive $6.2 billion to $6.8 billion in budget cuts for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), so-called nonprofit affordable housing developers see the writing on the wall and are jacking up the rents on the poor, elderly and disabled renters in their projects as fast as they can, before the budget cuts take effect. The fiscal year (FY) 2018 budget detailing the cuts was released May 23.

The Trump regime’s proposed $6.2 billion in budget cuts to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) threatens the renters in around 155 low-income affordable housing projects in Oakland with higher rents or eviction from their homes. The proposed $6.2 billion in budget cuts to HUD will disproportionately impact Black women and their families because such a high percentage of them rely on HUD’s subsidized housing programs.